In order to tell the terrifying story of the McPherson house haunting, one has to tell Carlie Summers’ story. On a beautiful spring day in 1992, I met Carlie for the first time. Sitting across the kitchen table from me, she rolled up the sleeves of her flannel shirt to expose withered, disfigured arms covered in long, thin white scars and discolored patches from burns that had healed years earlier. Their cause is Carlie’s story.
The events behind the insanity and depravity that created the haunting in the first place, and ultimately culminated in Carlie’s story, encompassed a time span of over 150 years. Unfortunately, due to space constraints, many of the violent events that occurred during Carlie’s four-year nightmare have been left out, others condensed, and still others depicted as they were described in police, accident investigators’, and coroners’ reports.
Many of the names and locations depicted in this book have been changed at the request of Carlie Summers out of respect for the privacy of the residents of the small Iowa town. To prevent the spirits of the McPherson house from drawing unwitting victims into their violent and demented history, the exact location of the house will remain unidentified.